Thursday, October 21, 2004

Calamity clouds the horizon

Traffic is an occupational hazard and driving in it isn't any fun. For me, even when the weather sucks, it's great to be out on the open road.

I managed to end up about two hours outside of Los Angeles in Wrightwood, California. That's where the Mountain High ski resort is located. We'd gone up (like in my Monday trip to Big Bear) looking for the first snow of the season. Didn't find snow, but we found a mud covered bridge that almost completely cut off the mountain town from the rest of the civillized world.

Tons of mud and rock washed over the bridge during the rain earlier that day. I admit it was a little embarrassing when people kept coming up and asking if we we're covering the road closures (of which there were two) and we kept telling people, no. We we're there to cover the snow (of which there was none).

The assignment desk had us move to the bridge and make that the focus of our story. Folks from the town who saw us out there were glad that we were getting the word out about the problem. If it doesn't affect them directly, most of our viewers in Los Angeles probably won't care too much about this story. The folks who live in the area seemed to appreciate the coverage, even though it wasn't the original reason why we were there. We were lucky and none of the other stations bothered to show up. It was just luck of the draw and being in the right place at the right time.

Even though we're all usually very mature about this type of thing and yeah, I know it's petty, but ha-ha.